Hi Scott,

Probably just the fog of war. However the fact that no U-boat was ever credited with sinking her doesn’t necessarily mean that she wasn’t sunk by one.

According to Moore she was sunk about 70 miles northeast of Cape Charles Virginia (37-24 North/72-20 West) on May 4, 1943. At that time of the war there was probably one or more U-boats in the area but even if they did see one that doesn’t necessarily mean it fired torpedoes much less hit her. Additionally, she was carrying aviation gas and ammunition so if a torpedo did hit her there probably would have been a very large explosion that nobody could have overlooked. Of course a torpedo could have hit the ship without detonating her cargo but two torpedo hits makes that less likely.

On top of that it was very difficult for a U-boat to engage a target in weather that bad. Holding the boat at periscope depth in rough seas was very difficult (it took considerable skill to do it in calm water) and high waves made it less likely that a torpedo would actually hit its target. Still it was possible though.

At any rate doing the research necessary to determine if a U-boat was in that area and then looking at its KTB to determine if it fired torpedoes at a ship is a job for someone with resources I don’t have. Additionally if a U-boat did sink her & was later sunk herself there might not be any record of it at all. The U-boats turned in their logbooks after every patrol but if they were sunk before getting back the log book went down with her. Some of them were reconstructed from the radio messages they sent before their sinking but there is some information we will just never have.

Most of the U-boat logbooks did survive the war though – at least for the patrols the U-boats returned from, and they have been studied for years to determine who sank or damaged who so the best evidence to date is that your ship wasn’t torpedoed. On the other hand new information comes to light from time to time.

My dad’s ship was sunk by a U-boat and her captain’s (Captain Darnell) next ship just disappeared without a trace. No U-boat claimed her, there were no survivors, no distress signal was picked up and no wreckage was ever found. There were also no storms in the area she would have passed through. That was in 1942. Just recently one astute researcher found that a ship claimed by one U-boat in her logbook never existed (some of her crew had survived the sinking & were questioned by the U-boat & had given them a false name for their ship – sadly they all died before they could make shore) and when they looked into it further they found that the ship the U-boat claimed had come from the same port and was bound for the same destination as Captain Darnell’s ship and was the same size. She was a bit out of position and a bit late but that wasn’t all that unusual either as she would have been zig zagging etc. she had also gone down in only a couple of minutes so there was no time for a distress signal. As she was the only ship that fit that description whose fate was unknown it had to be her and the mystery was solved after 64 years.

Actually I found a man who claims to be a survivor and I believe his claim. He was badly wounded when his ship was torpedoed and woke up in a hospital with no knowledge of exactly what happened. He went aboard her at the last moment, was a young fireman who didn't know anybody else on the ship and had never sailed on her before. He was in the hospital for many weeks and when he recovered he just went back to sea like the rest of our merchant seamen. He hadn't been on her for long enough to have much pay coming and he hopped aboard just before she sailed so he didn't have time to sign ship's articles and he figured he would never get his pay anyway and just went on with his life not realizing that nobody knew what happened to his ship. He didn't really know either. There was an explosion, he was on a raft but only semi-conscious and then he was in a hospital. They told him later he had come in by sea plane and there were no other survivors with him.

I have been trying every since to find a record of a sea plane pickling him up but I have no idea if he was picked up at sea by the plane or perhaps rescued by a ship & taken someplace where the sea plane flew him to the hospital.

Regards,

Ken Dunn